I’ve finished all of Sarah Waters’ work and now all I can do is wait for more queer historical shenanigans and melodrama 😭 Usually when I use the term ‘melodrama’ in a review, it’s not a great one, but I find Waters’ melodrama to be so engrossing, engaging, just fun! But she does have a more serious side as well. That’s a given since we’re talking queer people in the 1940s, when such a thing was outlawed and these women could not be their true selves in public. In The Night Watch, Waters also tackles backstreet abortion, so a big content warning for that. It was brutal.
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In this book we have Kay, Viv, Duncan, Helen and Julia, all with their own secrets and ties to one another. It’s an interesting structure, as we start in 1947, after the war has ended, and work back to 1941, so you sort of know the results before you know exactly what happened and how. Usually I’m not much one for wartime fiction but obviously this is a different angle (🏳️‍🌈) so I make the exception! It was actually super interesting to see how the war gave women new and more liberated roles, even as these terrible things were happening (as well as, gasp, being allowed to wear trousers 😱). She also wove in a storyline about the conscientious objectors to the war, which I’ve not read much about at all.
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It’s not quite as ~saucy~ as some of her other books, but really it wouldn’t be a Waters novel without a good sex scene or two 😏 Now that I’ve read them all, here are my rankings:
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1. Fingersmith
2. The Night Watch
3. Tipping the Velvet
4. The Paying Guests
5. Affinity
6. The Little Stranger